The first remotes (Magnavox?) were accustic, and the remote unit was purely mechanical. (electronic would have meant tubes, and big batterys) They had different pitched chimes that the buttons caused hammers to strike. The actual tones were above human hearing (so the TV program sound didn’t cause the channel to change itself) thus you only heard the click of the hammer blow.
You know, I think I’m going to go with steve as well.
Just steve it.
Hey, steve me one of those iceburgers.
Tris
It’s been referred to as a ‘mike’ for all of my 34 years. And we nuke food in the mike.
Microphone is also a mike. Mike is just a natural abreviaton of micro.
I live in SE Michigan, and find it amazing others haven’t heard these nicknames either.
I say “nuke-rowave.” I’ve said it for years, long enough that I don’t remember if I picked it up somewhere or made it up in a moment of random absurdity. Nobody else I know says it, though.
Vinnie Johnson.
Or Mark Chestnutt could reprise one of his country hits: “Bubba Shot the Nukebox.”
Or The Who could sing: “Mama’s got a nukebox she wear on her chest…”
Lots of possibilities here!
I know what a “mike” is. It is not for heating food. It is for sound amplification. Pardon me if I don’t immediately immediately grok your regionalisms.
New Yorker here. We use:
noun: mike, microwave, miker
verb: mike, nuke, microwave
I haven’t noticed anyone using “nuker” in the noun sense but I would know what it means if I heard it. I have never in my life heard anyone use “zap” or “zapper” nor would I have understood what it outside of context.
We also use “mike” for “microphone” but it’s easy enough to tell which mike by context. And really the microwave usage is much more common unless you are a musician or stage manager or something like that. I find usage of the microwave to come up in conversation much more often than usage of the microphone. And I would probably only use the casual “mike” instead of microphone only in the limited conext of a big stage or studio mike. I would use the lonfer formal word for things like the microphone on my computer.
“Magnetron” is actually the English name for the electronic component that generates the microwaves.
I think we can all figure out from this thread why nicknames for microwaves are not very commonly used.
Because they sound very very silly 
We do nuke our food, though.
I’ve never heard anyone use any kind of nickname for the microwave. It’s always just been “Put it in the microwave” or “microwave it.”
True, but in Dutch they also use it to describe the whole device. Microwaveable plastic wrap is “magnetronfolie”, etc.
Perhaps instead of saying ‘pop my food in the magnetron’, I can say ‘expose my food to the magnetron’, to be extra-correct.
“Dude, these sausages are all cold and tasteless. Show them a little magnetron, will ya?”
“Hey, I fixed you some soup. It’s in the radiation station.”
I sometimes refer to the “miniature undulation”, but that’s because I’m a smartass.
Wasn’t that Joan Jett?
We usually just call it a microwave here. I’ve heard people call it a mike but it’s not common. I can’t recall anyone around here calling it a “nuker” or a “nuke box”. I remember people calling them “radar ranges” back in the 70’s, but then that’s when Amana still advertised them as such. I still remember those commercials on TV. The last time I heard someone call it a radar range was back in the 80’s.
We almost never use microwave as a verb, though. It’s always “nuke” or maybe “zap”.
The TV remote control in our house is called the “clicker”. When I was young, our neighbors had a true “clicker” remote. Shaking keys would drive the thing nuts.
I live in the same area and I’ve never heard anyone tell anyone else to put something in the “mike”.
:smack:
Another vote for 'wave. As in “I’ll reheat this in the wave” or “wave this for me, please.” I probably use microwave more than wave, though. I have never heard mike or micro.
Huh. As another (lifelong) New Yorker within 100 miles of you over in Port Jeff, I have to say I have NEVER heard “mike” or “miker” in reference to a microwave or the act of using one. Very rarely, I have heard “Micro”. Come to think of it, I guess it’s possible I have mentally “corrected” any use of “miker” to “micro” in my head, as one of the common Long Island accents will pronounce terminal “-a” sounds as “-er” (e.g., “No idear”, “Mineoler” – if you listen closely to native Long Islander Billy Joel’s song Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, more than once he refers to Brender and Eddie). Or maybe you have done the opposite “correction” 
In everyday talk, while I pretty much never hear anyone shorten the noun “microwave”, the verb form is almost always a slang/short form: “nuke” is the most common, also “zap” and “bomb”.
Maybe we’re not in that big a hurry here, but I can’t remember hearing anyone try to use a shortened form of the word.
But what I really came here to say is this:
Microphones are not “mikes” (although it is pronounced that way).
Microphones are “mics”.